When her daughter filed a conservatorship action in South Carolina’s courts, Betsy Campbell was annoyed. She didn’t think she needed a conservator, and she knew her friends would agree. She objected to the petition, and she listed witnesses who would testify that she was doing just fine. Among the witnesses she listed were two long-time friends who were also physicians, and Ms. Campbell identified them as expert witnesses to her mental abilities.

In South Carolina, as in many other states (including Arizona), a petition for appointment of a guardian or conservator for an adult usually requires appointment of a doctor or other medical expert to examine the proposed ward. Early in the proceedings in Ms. Campbell’s case, her lawyers filed a form of order for the probate judge’s signature appointing her two friends as the court’s medical examiners; her daughter did not know that the request had even been made until the appointment had already been signed.

At the probate court trial on Ms. Campbell’s competence Dr. Preston Edwards and Dr. John Cathcart both testified that Ms. Campbell had arranged to fly them from South Carolina to her second home in Florida by private jet, and that they had each received $2,000 for their time. Dr. Cathcart acknowledged that he had been a social friend of Ms. Campbell for sixty years, and both doctors indicated that they had eaten dinner with Ms. Campbell as recently as four months before the hearing. They also both opined that Ms. Campbell was completely competent to handle her own financial affairs.

The probate judge relied on the medical testimony in denying the request for a conservatorship, and also made it clear that he did not approve of Ms. Campbell’s daughter having filed the petition in the first place. The daughter appealed to the next level of courts, where the judge agreed with her that the probate court should have appointed a "disinterested" physician to examine Ms. Campbell. That court also ruled that the probate judge had demonstrated an improper prejudice against Ms. Campbell’s daughter, and ordered that the case be retried by the probate judge from a neighboring county.

The Court of Appeals agreed with the reviewing court. Although South Carolina’s version of the Uniform Probate Code (Arizona is also a UPC state) does not require that the court seek medical advice from a disinterested physician, ruled the appellate court, it clearly evidences a preference for doctors who are not associated with the patient’s care. Besides, said the appellate court, it only makes sense to look for a neutral evaluation in something as serious as a conservatorship action. Matter of Campbell, December 19, 2005.

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